Written the week of April 20-26, 2026
In looking at team stats recently, I start to wonder how the Hooks have won the previous two series, an away series in San Antonio and one at home against the Naturals.
Going into this week’s series, the pitching staff tops the Texas League list with 172 strikeouts after 3 weeks of baseball and are third in team ERA at a reasonable 3.75. They are middle of the pack in walks per 9 innings, 5, and strikes per walk ratio, 2.15.* The former, walks per 9 innings, seems to show up in the 9th when we have a big lead. Overall, the pitching is good but not great. Lower those late-inning walks, and they might just become great.
A look at the offensive side of the ledger is quite informative. The Hooks are dead last in team batting average, .206, but third in strikeouts, and first in walks. They are fifth in runs scored. Out of the top 25 hitters in the league, two of them are Hooks players—number 21, Yamal Encarnacion, and number 23, Will Bush.*
What I’m gleaning from these statistics is that the Hooks have decent pitching and opportunistic bats. This week in North Little Rock, Arkansas, playing a 6-game series against the Arkansas Travelers, game 1 bears out the former, and game 2 affirms the latter.
In game 1, both the Travelers and Hooks pitchers limited hits to 5 for each team, and the final score, Arkansas 3-Corpus Christi 2, reflected a well-pitched contest.
In game 2, Corpus Christi won by a score of 7-1, recording 6 hits and 6 walks. I’m reminded of the box score in the early innings of the single loss last week. Naturals: 2 runs, 4 hits vs. Hooks: 4 runs, 2 hits. The Hooks, at this point in the season, do a lot with a little.
By the way, in the win, Bryce Mayer, Alejandro Torres, Railin Perez, and Derek True combined for 16 total strikeouts against only 4 walks. That is a stellar combined pitching effort.
In game 3, the Hooks whimpered at the plate with 3 total hits, while James Hicks pitched well enough over 5 innings to keep it close, and Joey Mancini struck out 7 and posted 0s across 3 innings in a 3-0 loss. The two pitchers were supported by solid defense most of the way. Two runs in the 3rd came after a fielding gaff allowed a possible double play to turn into no outs recorded. It was a mistake that didn’t show up in the box score, nor would erasing those two runs have changed the outcome.
I never want to write an article that simply regurgitates what happened on the field. I’ll make observations based on watching the games, but I want to go into the heart of being a fan, what it’s like to enjoy the game and the people around it. So as I watch game 4 on Bally Sports LIVE, I want to share those stories with you.
But before I do, after 3 complete innings in game 4, both teams have 0 runs, 0 hits, and 0 errors. When I told my wife that, I said, “Both pitchers are doing very well.”
She said, “All the batters are doing very poorly!”
And in that exchange, you get a look at our very different personalities.
My favorite place to sit at Whataburger Field is in the Goodwill Zone rocking chairs. I see the whole field, am close to the left field action, and get good views of homerun balls to that side of the ballpark. It is also the place where I’ve had some great conversations. I’ve already shared about the IceRay hockey players and VT 28 naval training squadron.
In 2022, I was sitting in the rockers when I met Susan Caray, wife of Chip Caray, the Atlanta Braves commentator that year. I’m always curious about the folks who visit, so I asked Susan, “Why are you at the game?”
“My sons are the commentators for Amarillo, and I wanted to visit them during the season. When I asked when I should come, they said, ‘Mom, come when the team is in Corpus Christi. Whataburger Field is a great ballpark to visit.’”
I had already met her sons, Chris and Stefan, earlier. At 6’5”, the twin brothers were hard to miss as they walked around the ballpark before the game.
I said to her, “I suppose my sad day was your happy day,” referring to when the Braves clinched the 2021 World Series championship in Houston.
At some point, I commented on seeing the Astros 2017 World Series championship ring on Reid Ryan in 2018, a ring my wife wore when she told Mr. Ryan that I’d be jealous if he allowed her to wear it. He did, and I was.
Susan smiled at my recollection, reached into her purse, and pulled out a Braves World Series championship pendant. It was dazzling, filled with diamonds, and I was again jealous. We spent several nights in those rockers talking about baseball, the Caray family’s history in baseball, and life in general.
Ross Adolph is a favorite player from seasons past. I met his then-girlfriend-now-wife Carly Townsend simply because she wore a Wisconsin Badgers baseball cap. My wife is from Wisconsin, and we lived there for more than 20 years, so I couldn’t help but notice the pretty young woman and her cap.
As long as Ross played in Corpus, Carly and I visited during games, often in left field. She’s the one who introduced me to Ross’s mother, Coreen, when she visited from Ohio. In that moment, I learned why I hadn’t won any of the jersey auctions involving Ross Adolph. If I had known who I was bidding against, I could have saved Coreen a lot of money, and me much auction angst.
Returning to what happened on the field, rains delayed Friday’s game until Saturday afternoon. The Hooks’ bats remained muzzled as they scored no runs on 3 hits and got shut out for the second game in a row. Saying they whimpered seems too loud a description.
In reviewing the Texas League team stats, I have reason to hope and reason to despair, typical of the up-and-down nature of a baseball season. It all goes with the territory of being a dedicated fan of a team.
The hope! The Hooks pitching staff hovers near the top in several important categories: strikeouts (#1), ERA (#3), runs (3rd fewest), homeruns (fewest) and a 2.55 K/BB ratio. That last is the number of strikeouts (232) divided by the number of walks (91).*
The despair! The Hooks offense isn’t very offensive to opponents. Nine shutouts have been thrown by the entire league over the first 4 weeks of the season. The Hooks bats own four of them.
The team batting average was low, .206, before this most recent series, and it has plummeted to .198, even as the series has progressed. The Hooks remain the team least likely to get a hit, averaging less than 6 hits over nine innings.*
In the building called the Texas League, the Hooks pitching lives in the penthouse, while the Hooks offense dwells in the basement. Average the difference, and you find the whole team, pitching and offense, somewhere well below the penthouse but no longer in the basement. The offense keeps the team closer to the bottom than the top and applies constant stress on the pitching staff to be excellent.
The standings bear this analogy out. The Hooks are tied for 3rd place in the South Division and one win short of being tied for 2nd.
The last game of the series against Arkansas illustrates how narrow the margin between a win and a loss can be, and how frustrating the season can be for Hooks fans. The Hooks actually held an early lead, lost it in the 8th, fought back in the 9th to send the game into extra innings, took the lead in the top of the 10th, only to lose it and the game in the bottom of the inning.
Do I still believe the Hooks will win the 2026 Texas League championship? I’m less inclined to think that, but I do anyway. Just as a 4-2 series win doesn’t make me go all in, a 1-5 series loss doesn’t make me quit the game. It is inevitably going to be a long season.
At the beginning of the week, I was wondering how the Hooks, with their offensive lack of sizzle, were winning games. The numbers didn’t favor a winning streak, and those numbers caught up with the team in Arkansas.
Now, while the team is at home, I get to see if some of the magic remains from weeks 2 and 3.
April 21 Corpus Christi Hooks 2-Arkansas Travelers 3 L
April 22 Corpus Christi Hooks 7-Arkansas Travelers 1 W
April 23 Corpus Christi Hooks 0-Arkansas Travelers 3 L
April 24/25 Corpus Christi Hooks 0-Arkansas Travelers 4 L
April 25 Corpus Christi Hooks 2-Arkansas Travelers 5 L
April 26 Corpus Christi Hooks 3-Arkansas Travelers 4 (10) L
*all stats provided by MLB.COM/MiLB/STATS/TEXAS LEAGUE
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